The pandemic, the evolution of technology, the aging workforce, and how people want to work today have all rocked the energy and utilities industry to its core. This article discusses four critical trends for utility organizations to keep an eye on and adopt in the next 18 to 24 months.
The energy and utilities (E&U) industry is historically innovative when it comes to technology — but the last year has rocked its way of working to its core.

The industry has been implementing new technologies to save consumers’ time and money, increase energy efficiency and improve conservation programs as far back as the 1970s. It even helped set the stage for the modern online user experience, taking on high-volume online transaction processing before most users and industries understood online transactions.

However, when it comes to people and processes, E&U still has a way to go. Many of the existing company roles and processes never experienced a true transformation. Instead, companies transitioned to processing the information digitally, without embracing the full extent of what technology can do.

Today, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic, many E&U companies are facing the results of innovation without transformation. And while the task of embracing operational and cultural transformation is daunting, there are a few significant trends that will help your company take the leap.

1. Business Anywhere

Many organizations are working remotely or installing and adopting new tools for virtual communication. But remote-work technology is just one way digital-first approaches are changing how we work and live together.

Business Anywhere starts with assessing how you work today before making decisions that will affect tomorrow. And while digital tools enable organizations to function during these unprecedented times, deploying new processes and managing people’s acceptance of change is just as important as technology.

If you’re not interested in becoming fully remote, you might still need to employ a Hybrid workplace. Such models combine virtual and in-person work models to gain access to the “serendipitous moments” afforded in an in-office setting while allowing team members who prefer heads-down work in their own homes to have such opportunities.

2. Trust

You’re no stranger to trust, even at work. But as the industry adopts more remote work following the pandemic, it’s essential to ensure you bake trust into your organization. This isn’t only important due to remote work, either — it’s critical to establish trust to help manage organizational change, communication and training to gain value from your strategic initiatives.

But that’s easier said than done — how, exactly, do you go about ensuring trust is part of your organization? By switching up how you measure results from your teams. Instead of checking how many hours they’ve worked or how many breaks they’ve taken, turn to results.

To do that, you need a performance measurement framework to give you a holistic view of how your organization defines success. Don’t base your performance measurement on how many meters your teams read, how satisfied your customers are or even how accurate your billing is. Turn to a combination of these metrics, and you’ll have a good understanding of how your team is doing, regardless of where they work.

3. Hyperautomation

Automation can relieve some of the complexity of supporting remote staff, leaving suitable tasks to the machine while remote teams perform knowledge work.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has long been the go-to for automation. RPA software, behaving as a participant in a process, can replicate human behavior to perform routine, repeatable, rules-based system interactions and integrations. It can perform everything from keyboard strokes, mouse clicks and data reads to logic and writes through existing user interfaces.

• And as a utility organization, you’re tasked with maintaining separate customer, asset and work management systems.
• Working with three disparate systems makes every task take a little longer — and that’s where process automation can come in.
• It can step in and act as that last mile of integration so your teams can work more flexibly and efficiently.

Today, new technologies such as hyperautomation — the combination of RPA, machine learning, natural language processing, enterprise systems integration, document ingestion and understanding, and more — can help take on those processes that need to go a step further than automation.

For example, we had a utility client whose financial team was getting bogged down chasing after small balance bills. Using a combination of RPA and artificial intelligence, we created a bot that would analyze a bill and determine when to dismiss it, pursue it through automation or leave it for human intervention.

Today’s Program Management Office faces challenges at every angle. From new technologies and environmental factors to shifting business strategies and changing customer expectations, PMOs need to upgrade to keep up. Learn a few tips for making the shift in this blog.

Last year may have been unprecedented, but there’s one thing we saw coming: an accelerated pace of change.

While no one was expecting to have to become digital within just a few months (if not weeks), there were already signs that businesses needed transformations.

To start, changing customer expectations, mass digitization and newer, faster competition were already on almost everyone’s radar. Change is becoming the new standard, forcing organizations to rethink not only their business strategy but also how they transform to meet and deliver on that business strategy.

Bring on the EPMO

In fact, according to one study, 67 percent of business strategies don’t work because of a failure to enact end-to-end strategy execution. To avoid this fate, you need to realign, deliver and gain value from your company’s project portfolios. That means embracing enterprise program management (EPM) as a strategic business capability — one facilitated by agile portfolio, program and project management to execute the strategy from end-to-end and realize business value.

The first step in embracing EPM as a capability lies in evolving your project management office (PMO). Today’s PMOs need to be agile themselves, focused on business outcomes and the organization’s overall strategy. An evolved PMO will play a critical role in ensuring your company is ready for any change the world throws at it.

Imagining a New Project Management Office

Many of today’s companies face unclear business strategies, confusion over their overall objectives, and constrained support from senior executives. What most companies do know, however, is they’ll need more project managers to help as they:

• Take on more projects related to enhanced and emerging technologies, and
• Transition to operating models primarily focused on product-based work.

In fact — according to Gartner — 50 percent of large companies will have integrated their separate IT and business PMOs into enterprise program management office (EPMO) “hubs” to help facilitate business transformation.

As a result, PMOs must transform so they can drive new initiatives aligned to your company’s evolving business strategies. They must stop delivering control and start supporting everything from strategy and financial planning to business value realization.

As I talk with leaders of companies about permanently adopting remote work, they often ask, “What do I need to do differently to manage remote hourly workers vs. salaried employees?”

Some seem a little embarrassed by the question. Maybe they feel that just asking it suggests that they aren’t sure they can trust remote workers like they trust salaried employees. Or, maybe they feel that managing hourly workers remotely is more difficult because of issues such as supervision or overtime auditing and compliance.

After I assure them that their concerns are completely natural and OK, I quickly share the good news: While the approach may differ in some ways, hourly workers can be just as effective as salaried workers in a remote environment.

Long-Term Talent Cultivation: A Case Study From New Orleans

In fact, absolutely no research indicates that hourly workers are any less trustworthy or will perform at a lower level when working remotely. Most people want to do a good job. I’ve worked with thousands of remote workers, and it’s rare for someone to intentionally neglect their duties, whether they clock in or work the same hours every day.

When preparing to have a remote, hourly workforce long-term, you need to think about how to unlock discretionary effort — inspiring employees to go above and beyond.

To do this, you must provide them with adequate support, the necessary tools for the job, and recognition for their efforts. You must also actively connect employees with the broader company mission. When employees feel their work has meaning, they put in more effort and feel more satisfied with their jobs, leading to greater productivity and retention.

Once you’ve considered how you will establish trust and inspiration, here are the operational tactics that will help ensure long term success for hourly workers:

• Provide remote-work training first. Everyone may struggle initially without training and guidance if they are new to remote work because supervision is different when leaders and workers can’t see each other as easily throughout the day. Increased training, supervision and check-ins will help hourly employees transition to full time remote work.
• Deploy smart metrics. “Smart” metrics are not about surveillance or tracking—they are about helping employees do their jobs. Putting in place smart metrics help identify training opportunities, process inefficiencies, and those who need help working from home—not monitoring their behavior. This is one area where managing hourly workers remotely may be easier than salaried workers because hourly tasks are often easier to measure.
• Ensure legal and compliance requirements are in place. Hourly workers are subject to more complex overtime laws, and the laws vary by state. You need strong processes and auditing to track hours, approval of overtime and more.
• Learn the different tactics needed to lead a virtual workforce and virtual teams. The surest method to guarantee remote workers — salaried or hourly — stay engaged is to build strong relationships with them and encourage them to build relationships with one another. Without face-to-face interaction, showing your human side is critical. Use the first 5-10 minutes of meetings for everyone to share a little bit about what’s going on in their lives. Bring your whole self to show what makes you tick as a person. Schedule virtual coffees or happy hours to check in on things other than business. Encourage employees to develop work friendships — research shows they make people more productive, happy and satisfied with their jobs. Simple measures like these go a long way to building trust.
• Hire for culture. Hiring for culture is a common strategy for finding salaried talent, but many companies overlook its importance when hiring for hourly roles. Remember: Your hourly employees may be the ones who are closest to your customers, goods or services. That makes them extremely valuable assets, so hire accordingly! Start by thinking through what makes employees successful at your company. What skills do they need to bring to the job, and which ones can you teach? Knowing that will help you hire hourly workers who fit into your culture and are pre-disposed to succeed.

So, if the thought of managing your hourly workers permanently makes you uncomfortable, don’t worry. Your hourly employees can absolutely perform as well virtually as salaried workers, simply by applying these additional steps and considerations.

Avoid the pain and frustration of a failed Salesforce implementation. This blog provides a detailed guide for success.

Executives have signed on the dotted line, or more realistically, within the DocuSign box. The whole world is now in front of you with this turnkey, ever-evolving Salesforce solution ready to fit any business need.

To get to this point, though, you have undoubtedly sat through countless proposal meetings and have put together enough facts, figures, and diagrams to make anyone’s head spin. It’s already been a journey, but now, how do you bring it to life and ensure you get the most out of Salesforce?

Planning and Preparation

Learn from those who have set up Salesforce and avoid the common pitfalls. Implementations fail because of a lack of adequate planning and road mapping, lack of ownership or clear lines of responsibility, and a mismatch between stakeholder expectations and subsequent results.

This pain and frustration can be avoided, and the list below will lay out the best ways to plan for success. Deep breaths, you’ve got this!

1. Identify and Prioritize Goals

Many clients realize immediate value from Salesforce when the implementation is broken into phases. We recommend you take the time now to lay out short and long-term goals and build your roadmap.

Key Questions:

• Who are the stakeholders, and what do they want out of this implementation? Do they have the same goals? For example, are the goals decreased contact center costs, increased revenue, or the elimination of multiple third-party systems?
• What sold your executives on Salesforce? Find out how Salesforce sold the platform. Did the company show multiple clouds or features, and who was part of the initial purchase? If your executives are jazzed about a longer-term vision, make sure you’ve aligned the plan to deliver those expectations.
• Is the project time-bound for a specific reason? For instance, is it part of a merger or acquisition, is it part of a conversion from another software (in other words, a software that has deprecated, one whose licenses were not renewed, and more), or product launch? What is driving the need to do this now?
• Can the implementation be phased? Are there certain features you need now, and others that can wait?
• What are the risks? Will this implement net new features or augment or replace current capabilities? Make sure to structure the rollout in a way that best mitigates risk.
• Is there an existing organizational structure to support the platform ongoing? If not, this is another good reason to phase the implementation and give the organization time to hire and train the right people for the right roles.

2. Organize Your Salesforce Implementation Team

Spend the time to ensure you have the right resources in key roles. Implementations can span long periods of time, employees can leave, but if the team’s structure and roles are defined, these changes will be a lot less impactful.

3. Understand Current State and Gather Requirements

Gather requirements by pairing key team members who understand current business processes and those who understand the Salesforce platform to ensure the most effective solutions.

Does your company have processes that have been around for years, built around a previous platform’s capabilities? This low code, high configuration platform means you may need to adjust business processes to make the most of out-of-the-box features.

Define what matters most upfront. If you aren’t sure what Salesforce is capable of, consider using a partner to help guide requirement gathering and solution design.